April 27, 2006

In perusing baseballprospectus.com's sortable stats (awesome new feature, by the way), I came across yet another gem from this first month of the season. Your Milwaukee Brewers are ranked 5th in the major leagues in defensive efficiency. Showing yet again that defense is so hard to judge just by watching it, I think this ranking would surprise and even shock most Brew Crew diehards. Defensive efficiency is defined by BP as "the rate at which balls in play are converted into outs by a team's defense". Is this just an early-season bubble ready to burst, or has the Brewers' defense really improved to the point that it's a valuable asset?

Well, previous studies tell us that batting average for balls in play tends to be heavily influenced by luck for pitchers. Following that line of thought, if this were indeed a lucky start by the Brewers' D, their pitchers would probably have unusually low BABIP numbers, right? As their pitchers' BABIPs regressed back to average, more hits would find holes and thus the team's efficiency would fall.

We'll divide the Brewers' pitchers into three groups:

1. those with BABIPs higher than they should be (a typical BABIP, according to BP, is in the .290-.300 range), and will probably get better as the season goes on.

2. those with BABIPs that are typical.

3. those with BABIPs that are lower than they should be and thus will probably get worse as the season goes on.

Wow, Ben Sheets at .395? I'm sure we can expect that to go down significantly, a good sign for Sheets' future success. We probably also can expect Davis' number to go down slightly as well, provided he actually lets the opposition put the ball in play (9 walks on Sunday). Justin Lehr has pretty much been shelled all month, so the jury is out on whether his number will come down or not.

Moving on to those who have probably been a little lucky so far, Chris Capuano jumps out as a guy who may be pitching a little over his head. That .220 is awfully low, and his groundball to flyball ratio (31/30) doesn't show him benefitting from an abundance of easy grounders. Most of our bullpen seems to have had their share of luck as well. Turnbow's numbers may not change a lot, but guys like Wise, Capellan and Kolb have been getting a lot of nice bounces. Research shows that pitchers have little influence over balls hit in play, a point very much against the grain of typical baseball thinking (as shown by the abundance of times a manager will yank a pitcher after giving up a bloop hit or a grounder through the infield). With that in mind, our bullpen may be performing a little bit better than we can expect for the remainder of 2006.

The forecasted improvement of Sheets and Davis, along with the probable decline of Capuano pretty much balance each other out. There are so many other factors to consider, but given what we've seen here, one could come to the conclusion that maybe we do have a pretty good defense. The Brewers finished 10th overall in this category last year. 2/3 of the outfield is very solid defensively (I'll let you figure out which 2), and the infield flashes a lot of range and is for the most part dependable. Below are the FRAA (fielding runs above average) for individual Brewers through yesterday's game:

Weeks has been our worst defender to the surprise of no one, J.J. and Clark have been stellar, and based on past performance, it's safe to say Jenkins will get better (he finished +8 last year).

2005's top 5 in defensive efficiency were Oakland, the White Sox, Cleveland, Houston, and St. Louis. If these teams' performances in '05 are any indication of things to come, the Brewers' current ranking is a very good omen.

One interesting observation when I did the chart. In the top of the 9th, with 1 out and with the score 5-3 Brewers, McCann hit a sacrifice fly. This made the score 5-4 Brewers, but made the situation 2 outs. This event actually was a 6.2% increase in Win Expectancy for the Brewers. Evidently at the time it occured, the out was more valuable than the run.

Hi everyone- sorry I haven't been around much lately. Easter commitments and my 3 year-old's birthday party, as well as numerous other distractions have gotten me out of my routine. In the meantime, John's doing a great job with the WPA logs and minor league notes. I promise I'll now be around much more.

Just a few notes for today and things that are on my mind.

Wes Obermueller signed with the Orix Buffaloes of the Japanese league. I suppose this doesn't necessarily signal a failed career, but it's too bad Wes has to go over there to pitch. You'd think some major league team would have room in its bullpen for him (hello, Kansas City). Of course, that's not to say everyone had given up on him. He was pitching for Atlanta's AAA affiliate, Richmond, and had a 2.45 ERA with 5 strikeouts in 11 innings. Obermueller always reminded me of Jamey Wright, another former Brewer with great stuff who just couldn't seem to harness it. He showed flashes, like last May 17th's 8-inning, 4-hit performance against Washington, but had too many like his performance exactly 2 weeks after that- 5 walks in 2 2/3 innings against San Diego. And of course, Obie could flat-out rake for a pitcher. Good luck, Wes.

I'm not really sure what this means, but Prince Fielder leads the majors in batting average on balls in play (BABIP), at a whopping .473. I know that for pitchers this stat is often based on luck and tends to even out over time. I would assume the same holds for hitters. Then again, did anyone else think Prince would hit .367 all year? I won't take anything away from Fielder as he's off to a great start as a Brewer, but I think we can all agree that Fielder's hits have had eyes this year, and several have fallen in that may not be doing that all year. That said, I'm looking forward to Prince's prodigious power beginning to display itself on a regular basis. Let's hope this hot start is a springboard to a rookie of the year campaign.

I was thinking about Rick Helling and when we could expect him back, when I realized that yet again, the Brewers have been pretty much injury-free through the first month of the season (knock on wood). You really can't underestimate the advantage the Brewers' medical staff gives them. Not only are they keeping players on the field, they're doing a good job of assessing concerns and getting guys back out there (Sheets). As shown in Ned Yost's starting lineup for today (Gross in center, Cirillo at second) as well as them sending Corey Hart back down to AAA, the Brewers seem to have more quality players than they know what to do with. As a lifelong Brewers fan, let me just say that that's a GREAT thing. These playing-time issues will sort themselves out as the season goes on and injuries will come, but if the Brewers continue to limit them as they have this year and consistenly in the past, it gives the Crew a huge advantage over more injury-prone teams.

Enjoy a matinee Ben Sheets start today- hopefully his teammates will get him his first win.

April 23, 2006

So far in 2006, Dave Bush's performance on Saturday is the highest rated MLB start, according the Game Score formula (86).

The chart below contains an error, which has since been correct. The error is small and in a blow-out game list yesterday, didn't make a difference. Also, the graph is pretty simple since the game was over by the 4th inning.
WPA Chart and Graph: